


Reflection of the Past and the Pain of the Present

by Nihonkikuasa211



Category: Code Black (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Medical Terminology, Self-Harm, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 11:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7047076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihonkikuasa211/pseuds/Nihonkikuasa211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mario knew first-hand what it was like to be beaten and unwanted. A abused boy is brought to Angels after being thrown from a moving vehicle, and the third year resident attempts to treat him before Angus tells him that the boy suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Will Mario be able to tell his friend the truth of why he wanted to save a boy who could not be saved?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflection of the Past and the Pain of the Present

**Author's Note:**

> All medical mistakes belong to me.

 

_Reflection of the Past and Pain of the Present  
_

The stain continued to spread beneath the figure lying on the ground, the stickiness of the blood filling holes into the slightly broken road. The figure’s eyes were closed, his body small. Cuts and bruises framed his delicate form, but that was not what the people crouching beside him, screams tearing at their throats, were looking at. The sirens wailed, the red and blue almost combining as the blood, so dark that night, continued to seep in the road in which lied the dying figure.

              No one knew his name.

              And, unspoken, no one expected him to survive.

* * *

 

              “What have we got?”

              Dr. Angus Leighton forced himself not to gasp at the scene before his eyes. Although he had spent the three years at Angels’ ER, infamous for almost always being in code black, having seen horrors in the medical field, the now third-year resident was not prepared for this.

              It was a young boy. Angus’ eyes gaped as he stared at the figure lying so ominously on the gurney. _About nine or ten years old,_ the third year resident thought. The clothes that covered him were worn and several gaping holes were seen through his too pale and thin skin. Angus could see the boy’s ribs, _one…two…three…_ as the third year resident saw with horror of the additional broken leg. The light-brown haired resident attempted to not focus of how the boy’s light brown hair was long; the bangs were soaked with blood. A boyish face, only covered in his own blood.

              “What the hell happened?” The resident turned to find his friend Mario look at the boy in strange intensity. It was only an expression that Angus had seen once. His blue eyes widened at the sight of Mario’s whitened hands, and of the burning anger stored within his dark eyes. As suddenly as Mario asked the question however, Angus found himself having to hold onto the gurney as the fellow third year resident pushing the gurney into the ER and shouting to bring the young patient to center stage. “And bring Dr. Rorish, damn it!”

              “But Mario –” Angus attempted to say. But it appeared that his friend was beyond listening to him. His only focus, it seemed, was on the boy. His mouth was only a firm line, and only Angus could see the anger clouding in the depths of his eyes, despite the desperate cage he tried to hold the feeling in.

              They had managed to get the young boy to center stage.

              “He needs a chest tube,” Mario muttered under his breath. Angus found himself becoming sick at the amount of blood flowing from the boy’s head. _He was thrown,_ the resident thought with a sick curling in his stomach. _But why?_  He almost missed of how Mario added, “But there’s no time.”

              Mario shouted for a CT scan as Angus watched with mild horror of how quickly Mario’s finger was inserted below the boy’s armpit. There were times in which patients were losing too much blood or their stats were too low to wait for a chest tube. Angus had done the procedure Mario was currently doing three times; but he handed Mario the chest tube to insert, he had never seen Mario so rough with a patient before; he almost missed the sixth intercostal space on the first try.

              As Mario was inserting the chest tube, Angus took out his pen light and opened the patient’s eyes. Carefully, he flashed the pen light over the patient’s eyes. The boy’s eyes were green, with flecks of gray.

              His eyes were not reacting to light. _No,_ Angus thought as horror slowly pulled at his heart. He checked again. Angus swallowed the lump in his throat as the same green eyes remained unreactive to light. The light brown-haired resident could only hear his faint heartbeat as he looked backward at the young boy’s vitals. He didn’t have a flat line.

              _A possible cerebral hemorrhage,_ Angus thought as he swallowed thickly. _Intracerebral hemorrhage…caused by trauma._ Never before he had he felt this sick. Not even when his father had told him that it would be a waste for him to be a doctor, Angus hadn’t vomit threatening to come on his lips even when treating a fourth degree burn patient. _He was thrown,_ Angus thought dully. He licked his lips, trying to contain the sob that wanted to come from his lips.

              “Mario.” His voice was quiet. “Mario,” Angus called again, causing the resident to look up at him, his dark eyes almost looking wild as he prepared to set the broken bone. _A broken leg, an easy break. But..._

              “Angus, help me set this leg.” Mario looked up, his eyes burning as his friend remained unresponsive. “Angus, I swear, if you don’t help me, I will –!”

              “Mario, he has a cerebral hemorrhage.” The words sounded as if they came from far away. Angus swallowed and prepared himself. “Setting a broken leg won’t help things.”

              Mario glared at him. Three years before, Angus would have cowed and stumbled in an attempt to explain himself. Now however, Angus took the risk to walk to Mario, and place a hand on his shoulder. “He still has a heartbeat,” Mario snapped, “and no flat line.”

              _Repeating himself,_ Angus thought. That was, during their years of friendship, a sign of how distressed Mario actually was. It was subtle; not repeating word for word, but it was still there. Looking closer, Angus could almost see the almost guarded look in the brown eyes. “We don’t know anything until we get the CT scan.”

              “What did Dr. Rorish teach us, Mario?” Angus almost yelled. He could almost feel the stare of the observers above center stage. “Don’t rely on machines.”

              Just as the words were out of his mouth, Angus heard a voice behind him stating that he had the results of the CT Dr. Savetti had ordered. Taking it as he thanked the male nurse, the resident took out the results he already knew in his heart.

              “Give me that,” Mario stated sharply. Without waiting for Angus’ answer, he practically tore the folder as he opened the file. The light-haired resident saw of how Mario’s eyes scanned, then read the results. A hard lump filled Angus’ throat as Mario paled and his hands, slightly, started to shake.

              _I’m sorry._ Angus wasn’t certain if he was talking to the young boy or to Mario. His blue eyes seemed to bore into Mario’s own, which were rapidly losing their focus. He didn’t even realize that he had said those words out loud until Mario looked at him in shock. The dark-haired resident appeared to not be able to move, his hands collapsed on his sides as he stared at the boy tied up to machines that couldn’t help him.

             “Dr. Leighton, Dr. Savetti.” Angus turned and found himself almost crying in relief at the sight of Dr. Rorish, their former mentor and current ER director. ‘Why was I called? I have no business in center stage, as you should know how to do everything I taught you.” Standing next to her, it made it feel as if the three years had not passed and Angus was still the unconfident first-year resident he had been. He noted of how she glanced at Mario, who was paling further and unable to meet her eyes.

              “It was a case of cerebral hemorrhage,” Angus stated without pause. “A boy was thrown from a moving car, and,” he paused for a moment, unable to handle the pain curling in his chest. “It was too late.”

              Angus heard something drop faintly in the chaos of his heart, and stared with a gaping mouth at the fallen CT scan results. He saw the familiar fading back belong to Mario as the resident ran away, his long legs creating further and further space between them as Angus shouted his name.

              “Mario!” Angus continued to call. _What is wrong with him?_ Angus half-thought as he looked back at the broken body of young – too young – boy. _I have never…seen him like this._

“Dr. Leighton?” Dr. Rorish’s voice was kind. She stared sadly at the body of the boy, the raw emotion robbing her of speech as she attempted to speak but couldn’t.

              Angus knew what she was asking him.

              “We should attach him to a ventilator,” he stated. _His heart is still beating. There was too much time between the time he was depleted from oxygen. So, even if…_ It was physically hard to breathe. The pain circulating in his lungs made it feel as if it there were shards of glass. His eyes stared at the impossibly young face, with its light brown hair, the back soaked with blood and the green eyes with a hint of gray closed. _What kind of people…could do this?_ A young boy, now brain dead with an intracerebral hemorrhage that had caused his death. Caused from the impact from being thrown from a moving vehicle. Angus fought the pain stinging his eyes, blinking rapidly as he stared back at Dr. Rorish. “The ICU should be good.”

* * *

 

              _Why?_ Mario thought, fury surging through his veins as he managed to not scream. _Why did this happen?_ He had seen the evidence of abuse. It was all over his body. The boy… _And I couldn’t even save him!_ That was the hardest part. Not being able to save someone, _anyone_ that had suffered through that pain.

              The pain of knowing you weren’t wanted.

              The agony of fear as _that_ person came home and you didn’t know what they would do.

              Creating a world in which you were safe, the pain and blood and simply _pain_ gone as you attempted to create a world in which no could hurt you.

              Mario could still remember of how it began. He was four years old, whining to his father about something. The very young child had been surprised when his father had slapped him. Mario had simply stared, not knowing what was going on, wondering…why his father had hit him. His small hand touched the mark where his father had hit him. It was that moment when Mario’s world had fallen apart. He hadn’t truly known about his parents’ addiction. To his four year old mind, his parents were normal. It was normal for his mother to not know that he was hungry and that his clothes didn’t fit him anymore. She didn’t have much affection for him, unless she was truly high and hugged him too tight and started sobbing into his neck. Mario remembered of how her hands always shook when she wiped off the blood off his cuts and didn’t look at his bruises. She didn’t say a word as his father started to beat him at the age of seven. It was normal.

              It was normal. Until he realized that his bastard father and coward mother died from overdosing that Mario, with scars that no one could see unless they looked at an x-ray, that it wasn’t normal.

              His life was anything but _normal._

              And when he started using, he _begged_ to whatever listened that he would never hurt a child like his father and mother hurt him. His mother had wiped away the blood from his cuts and other more serious injuries from his father…but she had not said anything. She had watched him fall to the ground, too scared to cry as his father walked away, high and his son’s blood on his fists. One time – only one time – Mario had peed from fear and that caused his father to beat him within the inch of his life. Twenty years later, the former whimpering and sad boy knew what injuries he suffered.

              A broken arm. Several cracked ribs. And numerous bruises covering his stomach and neck.

              Seeing another young boy, abused and broken, was like looking at his former self. Only this time, the boy didn’t have a chance.

              The cerebral hemorrhage and brain death had robbed him the chance of truly living.

              Mario hadn’t truly lived. Not truly. Until he met a man with blue eyes and a heart, that he had believed, not large enough to accept the cold mess that he was. But he did. The long nights spent talking to each other and soothing words easing from Mario’s lips as if he had always said them echoed in his mind.

              That was evidence enough.

              But the boy who had been thrown out a moving car because his shit parents got _bored of him_ , would never live again.

              And that made Mario angry. Rage started morphing into his chest, making it hard to take a breath. It felt as if he could see the too-still child now, small from malnourishment and from the abuse that took away his life. He could almost hear the child’s cries, his eyes widening as he was thrown out of the vehicle and then…

              Mario’s breathing became more unstable as his broken childhood memories flashed through his mind. _“Stop it, Dad!”_ The eight-year-old version of himself had screamed, tears wanting to come out but could not because otherwise he would get beaten up more, trying to halt the screams as he felt the pain jolting through his skin. _“Please! Stop it, please!”_

             Suddenly Mario couldn’t take it anymore. His fist collided with the concrete of the wall. He barely registered the pain, his mind overwhelmed with rage. Again. Again and again Mario punched the wall, not noticing the blood seeping out of the various cuts and of his damaged hands.

              Pain. Mario almost gasped at the amount of pain that entered his hand. It wasn’t from punching the wall too hard, or registering of how broken his hands were from the abuse.

              It was Angus. Mario’s eyes widened at Angus holding his hand to stop him from continuing punching the wall. Even more, there was pain. There was an emotional agony that Mario had only seen once. Angus had cried that day. Mario gasped as the said resident pressed his fingers on Mario’s hand. There were no tears this day.

              But the pain…

              “Let go of me,” the dark-haired resident almost hissed. He tried to not gasp as sharp red pain entered his fingers from his effort to pull away.

              “I won’t let you go unless you promise me you won’t do anything so stupid again,” Angus stated. Mario had expected anger from him, perhaps even disappointment. But there was only sorrow in his friend’s blue eyes.

              “He was thrown, Mario.” The blue eyes spoke of the agony that couldn’t be communicated no matter how many times words were spoken. “He was… _thrown_ , like…” His face paled.

              “Of course he was thrown, Angus.” Mario stated. The grip on his hand tightened, and the third year resident fought to not glare at his friend. “That’s what abuse does. Treated like –”

              “How do you know he was abused?” There was something close to astonishment in Angus’ eyes, combined with horror as his voice slightly trembled. “I only heard about it from the police officers that his…parents threw the boy out of their moving car.”

              What could Mario say? Only his grandmother knew about the abuse, and they weren’t particularly close. The resident thought. Although Angus didn’t know everything about him, he knew more than most. More than even the other residents. _Thank God no one else had to witness my…reaction._ Malaya and Christa were off today. It wouldn’t do any good if they saw him react the way they did, because…they would be concerned enough to not leave him alone. It wasn’t as if he didn’t trust them.

              It was just that Mario was in absolute certainty that Angus would never pity him for something that happened in his past.

              “My dad wasn’t just an asshole,” Mario said without looking at Angus. “He also beat me.” Perhaps he was more nervous than he thought, because Mario could feel the hesitation in his voice as he said those last words. He looked in Angus’ eyes, steeling himself for what he might see.

             Mario wasn’t surprised to see shock in his friend’s eyes. But what surprised him was of how Angus seemed to _understand_ almost, the horror fading slowly to a gentle look.

            “So that’s why your hands are like this.”

             Mario hadn’t had time to look at the state of his hands before, but Angus let go his right hand. _I didn’t even notice he was still holding it,_ Mario thought somewhat blankly. His dark eyes slightly widened at the state of the mangled flesh.

            His knuckles were bathed in red. They were swollen too, almost hiding the crooked fingers. _No wonder this damn hurt,_ Mario thought.

           “I guess the ER will have another patient,” Angus stated with a look at Mario’s two hands.

           “I can set my own fingers,” Mario groaned. “I’ve dealt with worse.” The words came out before he could think, and Angus bit his lip awkwardly.

           “Can you wrap wounded hands in gauze?” Mario asked. “Because I damn can’t.”

           It was his own way to dispel the awkwardness between them. Somehow though Angus seemed to know what was going on in Mario’s head because he smiled softly.

* * *

 

          Angus was gentle. Setting the bones back in place was the hardest part of the procedure as the two third year residents sat inside an empty room. Interestingly enough, it was the same place where Mario had kissed Heather. _Don’t think about that now,_ the dark-eyed resident thought to himself as he sat still as Angus gentle set his broken fingers. Something similar had happened then, but there was a tenderness that Mario hadn’t felt before from either Heather or his mother. Neither of them had been gentle when treating his injuries, and his mother’s attempt at soothing his wounds seeped in guilt. Mario could almost taste it. There was care in Angus’ hands as he sprayed disinfectant on Mario’s throbbing flesh, and there no judgement either when Mario faintly gasped when the resident began to wrap the gauze around his friend’s hands. The gauze was tight, enough so that Mario could barely move his hands to open the door.

               “You didn’t have to make them so tight, you know.”

               They hadn’t spoken when Angus was treating Mario, but the complaint caused the other resident to withdraw from his thoughts.

              “You need to heal,” Angus stated. Mario almost looked away from the seriousness in his eyes. There was a double meaning behind his words. “Mario,” his gentle friend stated slowly, “it wasn’t your fault. What happened today.” Mario could still see the nameless boy, lying on the gurney. Empty. Alone. “Anyone could have reacted the way you did, and –”

             “It was an intracerebral hemohhrage, I know.” There was still anger in his voice, but no longer rage. Angus appeared to ignore Mario’s rough tone. “Brought on by severe head trauma.” There was a heavy sigh. “What a waste.”

             “The boy’s name was Avery Willow,” Angus sated slowly. Mario turned and found the same emotional pain that had appeared before gleaming in his eyes. “I…overheard the police officers talking, and they said that the parents didn’t care. Not at all. They didn’t even,” Angus heavily swallowed and anger coated his voice as he stated the words that Mario had suspected in his heart to be true. “Care. They didn’t even care, Mario. That boy was eight years old. _Eight_.” He looked like he was about to cry.

“What will happen to the – to Avery now?” Mario asked. _Hold it in,_ he thought. _Hold the anger inside. I’m not going to make Angus bandage me again._

Angus licked his lips. “He’ll be…taken off the ventilator. There was too much in between the time when he was found and when we realized what kind of trauma he had, so his organs can’t be donated. Given of how the police officers recently interrogated the parents…I would say they’re probably taking him off the ventilator soon.”

              “I’m not going,” Mario said. He already knew what Angus was going to ask him, and before his friend could reply again, the fellow resident continued. “He’s dead, Angus. My presence won’t make him feel anything, and it won’t help me either.” Anger started to rise out of him as he stared at the saddened expression on his friend. “They’ll bury him in a grave where people never visit, and people will say that’s it’s a tragedy that could have been prevented if someone had just _seen_ something, and no one will –!"

              “It seems to me that you care a lot,” Angus stated calmly to Mario’s raised voice. Mario felt his anger fade, physically felt the anger melt away inside as Angus spoke to him in a quiet tone. Mario stared at his friend, seeing only the man with gentle eyes and a kind heart that truly knew him. “What will help, Mario? I know that seeing…Avery won’t help, but what will?”

              _Just nothing._ The same as he had always done. Pushing it inside until nothing remained but raw pain and dulled rage. But now as he stared at Angus, something within his process of thinking had changed. There were times when Mario remembered the conversations he and Angus used to have two years ago, the words they had said to each other in his mind. That healing had helped Angus. It truly helped him heal and make them closer.

              “I just need the same…treatment as I gave you, Angus.” Mario stated. A small happiness grew inside him as he saw Angus nod. _He needed me as much as I needed him,_ Mario thought.

              _Then perhaps…_ his mind flashed to of how Angus had treated his damaged hands tenderly. The image of his father hitting him and his breath being knocked out of him, and of his mother, sobbing with guilt and grief as she attempted to remove the stain that wouldn’t fade.

_Perhaps…I will be able to truly heal, this time._

_With you, this time._


End file.
